Industrial Economics and Organization: A European Perspective, 2/e
Bernadette Andreosso David Jacobson
ISBN: 0077104226 Copyright year: 2005
Preface
In some respects this book is a new book rather than the second edition of an old book. The first broad aim in the re-write of the first edition was to reduce the size and increase the number of the chapters; there are now many more chapters (16 as compared to 7 in the first edition). This is in response to the experiences of lecturers (including us) who have adopted the book as their course text. Large chapters with many sections of uneven sizes proved difficult to break down into lecture-sized bites. We have in this edition given much thought to chapters as topics. The book is, of course, an integrated whole and there is a significant amount of cross-referencing between chapters; there is nevertheless a choice in relation to what topics to include in, for example, a 12-week module.
For lecturers following traditional course outlines, Chapters 1 to 7, 9, 10, 12 and 15 will provide topics for 11 weeks, leaving a final week for revision. If more material can be covered within this period, or if a semester is more than 12 weeks, there are additional empirical chapters, in particular 13 (on the performance of firms in Europe) and 16 (on industrial policy in Europe).
As an alternative, and especially for students who have had good introductory courses in Microeconomics, Chapters 3 and 5 could be omitted. With the extra two weeks, lecturers and/or students could choose two topics from Location (Chapter 8), Technology (Chapter 11) and Globalization (Chapter 14). While Technology is frequently included in textbooks in this area, the treatment in Chapter 11 draws on the type of material that is of most policy relevance, and is in this sense non-traditional in Industrial Economics. In relation to the other two topics, both their presence and the way they are covered, are also atypical for textbooks in this area.
The second broad aim of the revision was to add new content and update the old content. The main new section is Chapter 14 on Multinational Enterprises and Globalization. Even here, some of the material is drawn from sections of the old edition but it is largely a completely new element of the book.
In updating, we examined both theoretical and empirical developments; much has changed in relation to both since we completed our work on the first edition nearly ten years ago. Game theory has continued to pervade the discipline, existing theories of the firm have continued to develop and new ones have emerged, and new hypotheses continue to be posited in many of the almost infinite variety of relationships that can exist between elements of firms, their performance, and aspects of their environment. New trends have emerged in some of the key focuses of our discipline, for example mergers and acquisitions. There are also ten new members of the European Union.
We have attempted in all chapters to incorporate the most important of these developments, not by showing the technicalities and details of the increasingly sophisticated research methodologies, but by summarising their results. In this we have attempted to minimize the use of mathematics. Where we use mathematics it is either in an appendix (as in Chapter 2) or it can be skipped without losing continuity (as in Chapter 6).
While we shared all the work between us, we had different primary responsibilities. Bernadette’s were Chapters 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 13, 15 and 16; David’s were Chapters 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, and 14. We shared Chapter 12 equally.
The authors would like to thank Jim O'Connor, whose MBA dissertation helped a great deal in laying the foundations for the 'Software MNEs and the Irish supply base' case study' in Chapter 14.
2005 McGraw-Hill Education Europe